Q&A star Duncan Storrar overcomes trauma to pose fresh questions

Neil McMahon

He was first declared a hero, then hounded and humiliated and driven into hiding, in despair.

But now Duncan Storrar, the man whose Q&A question defined the election campaign at its outset, has emerged to challenge the nation's leaders once more in the final hours – declaring that the vilification he endured has spurred him to become a full-time public advocate for the poor and the voiceless. And he has revealed that the question that up-ended the campaign on its first full day was almost never asked.

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Duncan Storrar opens up about backlash

Duncan questioned higher earner tax cuts on Q&A and in return was persecuted in the media. But he never did get an answer to his question.

In an exclusive interview with Fairfax Media, Mr Storrar, 46, said the eight weeks since his Q&A appearance had been traumatic and forced him from his Geelong home and into seclusion. But on election eve, he wanted to end that isolation and let Australians know that his original act of notoriety – the simple act of asking a politician a question – was his right as a citizen.

"I'm getting there, I'm doing better. I don't think I'll ever recover from it, but I am doing better," he said of his baptism by fire in the public arena, which included both the uplifting – Australians donated more than $60,000 to a crowdfunding account set up by two Q&A viewers – and the humiliating, when News Corp papers ran a series of stories detailing past criminal convictions.

Duncan Storrar: "Somebody like me has a right to speak." Photo: Justin McManus

"Somebody like me has a right to speak," Mr Storrar said.

"It doesn't matter what my past is, I'm a member of the Australian community and I have a right to ask my politicians a question … by attacking me the way the media attacked me, what it was saying was that the common man can't ask a question and he certainly can't ask a question that punches a big hole in their political argument."

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He had not gone to Q&A that night to make campaign trouble; when he applied for a spot in the audience at a Melbourne broadcast of the show the campaign had not started. And the question that sparked the uproar – perhaps the most notorious inquiry of the 2016 campaign – was not the question he wanted to ask.

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He had been on the Q&A audience mailing list for some time and had submitted possible questions. That night he had hoped to ask about compensation for victims as a result of the royal commission into child sexual abuse, at which he has been a witness. But because the show was all about the budget, producers asked him to use his proposed question on that issue. And so that's what he did, on Monday May 9, the day after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called the election.

Sitting alone in the audience – "I love Q&A but I couldn't get anyone to come with me" – Mr Storrar addressed panellist and federal minister Kelly O'Dwyer: "I've got a disability and a low education, that means I've spent my whole life working for minimum wage. You're gonna lift the tax-free threshold for rich people. If you lift my tax-free threshold, that changes my life. That means that I get to say to my little girls, 'Daddy's not broke this weekend. We can go to the pictures'. Rich people don't even notice their tax-free threshold lift. Why don't I get it? Why do they get it?"

In the ensuing debate, Ms O'Dwyer was mocked for mostly avoiding the question while also raising what became one of the most potent images of the campaign: the $6000 toaster, an appliance she said the government's tax write-off scheme had allowed a cafe in her electorate to purchase. Mr Storrar also faced an aggressive response from panellist Innes Willox, CEO of the Australian Industry Group.

"I couldn't believe what they were saying," Mr Storrar says.

He describes having an anxiety attack as the TV confrontation unfolded. His apparent poise was anything but. "I was shutting down. That's me saying, 'I don't want to talk any more'. I was blacking out."

Of Ms O'Dwyer – in a battle to hold her blue ribbon seat of Higgins today – he said: "I just think she's from a different planet." But he is also critical of the Labor Party. "Something went wrong between Gough Whitlam and now." The only political party to offer him private and public support was the Australian Progressives.

In the days that followed, Mr Storrar became a national lightning rod. By the end of that week, his old criminal record was published by the Herald Sun, which called him a "thug" and a "villain". By then, the attention had taken a severe toll, worsening his crippling anxiety. Earlier this year, he had also been diagnosed with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder linked to sexual abuse he suffered as a ward of the state.

After Q&A, "I didn't go outside. I'm still scared to go outside."

He retreated to the country property of a friend – "I chopped a year's worth a firewood. Chopping wood can be very therapeutic." Post-Q&A, he had been contacted by an American author and poverty campaigner, Linda Tirado, who was visiting Australia and who had faced her own collision of public humiliation and acclaim after a blog post on life for the poor went viral in 2013. Watching the public uproar over Mr Storrar, Tirado says, she realised he was enduring a similar life-changing challenge.

She delayed her return to the US and now they have joined forces to create the the Rise And Be Heard project – taking its inspiration from Mr Storrar's Q&A experience. It allows people to pose questions to politicians online, which the organisation then takes up the power chain for answers.

Mr Storrar says at first he did not think he would speak to a journalist ever again. But now, "I've accepted that [speaking out] is part of what I do. There's nothing you can write about me that hasn't been written. There's nothing you can do to me and that's sort of liberating."

In the eight weeks since, has he heard anything like an answer to his questions on economic injustice? "Nothing," he says, noting that June marked the 29th anniversary of Bob Hawke's failed 1987 pledge – "By 1990 no Australian child will be living in poverty".

"In that time we've had both Labor and Liberal governments in power and neither one has done anything to solve this problem but they have both done things to make the problem worse."

He again offered his thanks to Australians for the flood of support, which included an avalanche of movie ticket vouchers so he could take his daughters to the pictures, as he'd mentioned in his question. The crowdsourced donations of money are in a trust fund for their education.

The support suggested people "want to do something about the state of poverty in Australia and the politicians are ignoring the fact that the Australian people want to do something. It was like, this is something we could do because we don't know what to do. If you walk down Spencer Street at 7 o'clock at night it's like you can pick which person's going to die tonight from the freezing cold. I suspect that the people who [donated] … it's the drive from them that they don't know what to do about the people in Spencer Street and this thing pops up so they put money into that. We need leadership to tell the people what they can do to help."

* Questions for politicians via Mr Storrar's and Ms Tirado's new project can be lodged at riseandbeheard.com or at the Facebook page @RiseandBeHeardTour.